This is Ueno Pond. It is, in fact, a pond. Not a patch of grass. The picture was taken at 8 am on the morning of my first day in Japan – the beginning of a 14 day backpacking adventure starting here at Ueno in Tokyo, going to Kyoto and various cities and towns in between, and ending up back in Tokyo. I used this image because it is easy to view it as just vegetation. While it IS a BUNCH of lilies, it still isn’t JUST a patch of grass.
We arrived in Japan the day prior to taking this picture, around 7pm, with no idea what we were doing. We had flown in, tired and hungry after a 14hr+ flight from Baltimore, MD. We also had no idea how to order food in Japanese. So, after stumbling about and finally finding someone who could speak english, we collapsed in our room and went to sleep. This image of the pond was the first thing I saw upon waking up, and it was indeed a bright and happy image to see. It was reassuring. Later that day we met up with the other people in our tour group and got to meet our Australian tour guide (which was a great relief that everyone spoke english). We even got food into our grumbling stomachs.
